Expensive for a non-OLED TV. Samsung's Bixby is no Alexa or Google Assistant.

Bottom Line

The Q9FN TV proves Samsung's QLED technology can go toe-to-toe with OLED, with the widest color gamuts we've seen in a consumer display.

Samsung's flagship QLED TVs are big, attractive, and expensive LED-backlit LCDs packed with every performance-enhancing technology the company has available. We've been skeptical of just how good a picture you can get out of an LCD compared with the fantastic color range, contrast levels, and perfect blacks OLED TVs like the LG E8P series can produce. The Q9FN line sits at the top of the QLED series, and at $3,499.99 for the 65-inch QN65Q9FNAFXZA model we tested, it's comparable with LG's E8P OLEDs in price and features. It can't touch the E8P's black levels due to the nature of the two display technologies, but it shows the widest color range we've seen yet and very strong performance thanks to its incredibly bright panel. For those benefits, the Q9FN series earns our Editors' Choice.

Editors' Note: This review is based on testing performed on the QN65Q9FNAFXZA, the 65-inch model in the series. Besides the screen size difference, the 75-inch $5,999.99 QN75Q9FNAFXZA is identical in features, and we expect similar performance.

A Stylish Two-Piece Design

The Q9 looks surprisingly simple and unassuming for Samsung's flagship TV. The screen is framed by an angled, dark metallic bezel only a fraction of an inch wide and distinguished by a tiny rectangular protrusion on the bottom edge that holds the Samsung logo. The TV sits on a U-shaped black brushed metal stand, or can be installed on a wall with a compatible mount. The back of the screen holds only a single connector for a thin, silver-colored cable. This is the wire that runs to the Q9's OneConnect box.

The OneConnect box is the Q9's brain and connection hub. It's a black rectangular box that feeds all signal and power to the TV, managing every input. The back of the box holds four HDMI ports, an Ethernet port, a cable/antenna connector, a connector for the power cable, and a rectangular port for the aforementioned cable that runs to the screen. The right side of the box holds three USB ports.

The remote is a slim, silver-colored metal wand laid out similarly to the thin black remotes of Samsung's non-flagship TVs. It's dominated by a large, circular direction pad, above which sits a power button, a microphone button, a manual input button that provides access to numbers and four color buttons, and an Ambient Mode button that significantly dims the picture and displays art. Home, back, and play/pause buttons sit below the navigation pad, with volume and channel rockers below them. A pinhole microphone near the top of the remote lets you access Samsung's Bixby voice assistant.

Samsung Smart Features

Samsung continues to use its own smart TV platform for the Q9's interface and connected features. While it's functional and visually pleasant, it's also very Samsung-centric. It uses the company's often forgotten Bixby voice assistant rather than the more common Alexa (found on Amazon Fire TV devices), Google Assistant (found on Android TV devices), or even Siri (found on the Apple TV). It can control smart home devices compatible with the Samsung SmartThings platform, but that covers a relatively paltry 200-plus gadgets compared with the thousands the other voice assistant/smart TV platforms can work with.

Samsung's streaming media selection is also pretty small compared with Android TV, Fire TV, and Roku TV. The big names are present, including Google Movies & TV, Hulu, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube, but you won't find nearly as many niche or otherwise enthusiast apps or services. A Universal Guide feature helps by aggregating live television from broadcast or cable/satellite boxes into the TV's menus, which is a nice feature if you aren't a dedicated cord-cutter.

Performance by the Numbers

The Q9FN is a 4K TV capable of displaying high dynamic range (HDR) content. It supports HDR10 and Samsung's dynamic HDR10+ formats. It does not support Dolby Vision.

We test TVs using a Klein K-10A colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and SpectraCal's CalMAN software on a Razer Blade Pro laptop using methodology based on Imaging Science Foundation's calibration techniques. In HDR+ mode with HDMI Black Level set to Low, the Q9 shows a peak brightness of 673.96cd/m2 (with a full-screen white field) and a black level of 0.05cd/m2 for an excellent 13,479:1 contrast ratio. This doesn't represent the Q9's maximum brightness, however; with the HDMI Black Level set to Auto the TV can put out 749.85cd/m2 with a full-screen white field and a whopping 1,090.06cd/m2 with a 10-percent white field. However, these settings push the black level up significantly, resulting in a lower contrast ratio.

Still, the Q9 stands as one of the brightest TVs we've tested. The LG E8P can also get very bright at 740.23cd/m2, while the Sony A1E shows a much more modest 470.22cd/m2 peak brightness. Those two OLED TVs naturally offer superior "infinite" contrast, however, simply because they can display perfectly dark blacks.

The Q9 shows one of the widest color gamuts we've seen in a consumer TV. The above chart shows Rec.709 broadcast standard color levels as boxes and measured color levels out of the box in HDR+ mode with the Warm2 white balance preset as dots. The Q9's reds and greens far exceed broadcast standards without noticeable tinting (blues have less room to grow, due to the nature of visible light). It doesn't quite hit the Rec.2020 wide color gamut levels established as the eventual ideal of HDR TVs, but it comes admirably close, reaching past the color range of the LG E8P. The closest we can come to a complaint is that cyans lean very slightly green, but not enough to make a noticeable visual difference without placing a perfectly calibrated TV right next to it for comparison.

Viewing Experience

The BBC's Planet Earth II shows off the Q9's excellent color range. The greens of the planets and blues of the waters in the "Islands" episode look vibrant and natural, displaying excellent range without appearing oversaturated. Fine details like bark, leaves, and sloth fur look crisp and clean in both direct sunlight and shade. It's a bright, lifelike picture of nature.

The Q9's superlative contrast is apparent in The Great Gatsby, where the extreme brights and darks of the party scenes test highlight and shadow detail on most TVs. Contours of black suits and the texture of dark hair comes through clearly without looking muddy or washed out here, regardless of how bright the white lights and balloons are in the frame. Flesh tones appear natural, not pale or tinted.

Deadpool also looks very good on the Q9. Deadpool's costume in the fight on the highway looks red and vivid, not dull or slightly purple from the relatively cool, overcast lighting of the scene. The bright orange and yellow fire in the burning lab fight appear bright and natural, with varied hues in the highlights of the flames and clear details in the shadows that don't look washed out against the flickering lighting.

Input Lag and Power Consumption

Input lag refers to the amount of time between when a TV receives a signal and the display updates, and is important for playing video games that require accurate timing. In most picture modes, the Q9 shows a poor input lag of 78.4ms. Turning on Game Mode drops that to a more reasonable 28.9ms, which is still higher than the 20ms range we like to see to consider a TV very good for playing games. However, manually disabling the motion processing features in Game Mode drops that number down to 15.6ms, which readily makes the Q9 one of the best TVs for gaming.

Under normal viewing conditions, with no power saving modes enabled, the Q9 consumes 131 watts. Setting the Eco mode to Low drops that down to 96 watts while slightly dimming the screen, and setting the mode to Medium cuts it to 82 watts while further dimming it. The High Eco mode dims the screen too much to watch comfortably. Ambient mode, which dims the TV significantly while passively showing art or a stylized clock, consumes 77 watts when in use, so keep that in mind before leaving the Q9 in Ambient Mode when you aren't actively watching it.

The Best Color Performance on a TV Yet

Samsung's Q9FN is the company's flagship TV, and rightly so. While it can't reach the contrast extremes of OLEDs, it shows the widest color range we've seen yet, and very strong contrast for an LED-backlit LCD TV. The Q9FN's picture is fantastic, and for that it earns our Editors' Choice. If you prize color range over contrast, or simply would prefer a more conventional TV technology until OLEDs have matured a bit more, the Q9FN is the TV to get. If you want to go all-in on OLED, the LG OLED65E8PUA is our top pick (albeit for $500 more). And if you want very good performance in a much less expensive package, the TCL 6-Series is our favorite budget TV and available at a fraction of the price.

About the Author

Will Greenwald has been covering consumer technology for a decade, and has served on the editorial staffs of CNET.com, Sound & Vision, and Maximum PC. His work and analysis has been seen in GamePro, Tested.com, Geek.com, and several other publications. He currently covers consumer electronics in the PC Labs as the in-house home entertainment expert... See Full Bio

Samsung Q9FN QLED Smart 4K UHD ...

Samsung Q9FN QLED Smart 4K UHD TV (QN75Q9FNAFXZA)

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